Hacker News Reader

Comment by DueDilligence | Hacker News Reader

.. as a Seattle dad .. I fucking love this awkward yet clearly precedent-setting case. I know most of the board and the majority of us are fed up and taking the power we have to task and accountability. This has been in the works for over four years and we know the end game: new laws, adopted by other cities and states. .. it’s been a clearly focused project for over 4 years now. One of my friends is on the board. I knew it was coming Q1 2023 and glad they stayed on task. A bevy of mental health experts are core to this - so due diligence. I don’t know the layout of the legal team, but was told they have put this thru the ringer - the goal has always been a legal precedent, then actual legislation then adopted by other entities as well. The Portland School District has a parallel lawsuit as well. The pushback will be WELL propagandized and vilified. I can only imagine what garbage FOX will spew.

View on HN

Both you as a parent and the board had the power to stop children from using social media; or at least severely restrict it. Yet you choose to waste years on a very low probability lawsuit?

The lawsuit is going to be dismissed due to lack of standing.

TikTok offers their service to people they know to be teenagers, during school hours, when those teenagers are inside the school building (with TikTok's tracking of users, they surely know it.)

I don't expect this lawsuit to succeed, but it's not entirely without merit and I do think the school district has some standing if for no other reason than because TikTok is serving videos to, and accepting uploads from, students who are actually in school.

Every school system sets its own vacation days, and home schooled kids don't share the same set hours or days as the local school districts.

I don't doubt that the harms are real, but I do suspect that you are putting an unreasonable burden on tik tok here.

What I'm actually most curious about is when did schools start letting kids have cell phones during the school day? I was in school roughly just before smart phones were a thing, but texting was starting to become popular if you could get a plan that didn't charge per text.

The expectation was your phone stayed in your locker if you brought it to school, and anyone caught with one during class or in the hallways during class hours would have it taken away until the day was over.

> Every school system sets its own vacation days,

You're missing the part where TikTok knows where their users are, and know when a thousand kids are clustered together inside of a known school building in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. It's not rocket science to figure out those kids are in school. They know it.

> home schooled kids

The inability to perfectly know when a kid might be "in school" doesn't make much difference in my eye. They could easily detect it most of the time, and probably do, but choose to serve those kids anyway.

>They could easily detect it most of the time, and probably do, but choose to serve those kids anyway.

Seems ridiculous to push this responsibility on companies and app engineers. It isn't society's job to child proof the world for distracted children. Parents and guardians have to take the reigns and deal with discipline issues directly.

This is an interesting point. I agree with you that TikTok clearly knows what is going on and could disable accesss during school hours if they wanted to. Although not exactly a parallel, there are already laws protecting children from tobacco advertising near schools.

I wrote a similar comment below. This will still be a very difficult case to win. No one ever went after Nintendo even though they knew their devices were being used during class time. AT&T can also see teens texting in class but also do not have a legal responsibility to prevent this. Parents already have a tool-- parental controls-- to prevent social media use during school hours.

If the plaintiff can show that social media companies went out of their way to specifically target children during school hours (versus any other time of the day), there might be a stronger case. But ultimately the courts will not write new laws. This is the job of the legislature. Definitely write your congressperson.

Since Google/Apple have location services data on the phone, map databases that know where schools are, and the ability to limit use of specific apps or the entire device, do you figure they are similarly liable? It would seem a lot easier to have the platforms solve the problem once than delegate it out to be solved a millions times by every app in the store.

Or the schools could make and enforce rules without relying on tech companies to make decisions for them? This is so ridiculous.

Yes, I think they should be.

It seems completely wrong to me that every app should have a legal obligation to track the location of children to find out if they are at school.

To me the whole enterprise is totalitarian, but if I were trying to build a solution, it would look something like this:

1) Add a school control mode to the devices, similar to existing parental control mode. In this mode the school can block categories of content or usage during school hours. The school administrators don’t get to look at the student browsing data.

2) Schools can enforce a policy that unenrolled devices are banned from campus. The device can make it easy to check using something like NFC or an indicator accessible from the lockscreen (similar to the existing medical ID).

> It seems completely wrong to me that every app should have a legal obligation to track the location of children to find out if they are at school.

Start with the big social media apps, then work from there if the general problem persists (I think it won't.)

From what I’ve heard from relatives, a big portion of what the kids are doing on their phones these days is just messaging in iMessage/sms group chats.

.. it’s been a clearly focused project for over 4 years now. A colleague is on the board..A bevy of mental health experts are core to this - so due diligence. I don’t know the layout of the legal team, but was told they have put this thru the ringer - the goal has always been a legal precedent, then actual legislation, then adoption by other entities as well. The Portland School District has a parallel lawsuit as well on the tails of ours.

.. I suggest this light reading: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=7.48

Thank you for the link! The evidence of negative mental effects is definitely there. Labeling social media a public nuisance is an interesting strategy.

I am skeptical that courts will be willing to make a leap to follow this reasoning, especially when social media is so pervasive outside the school setting. Kids used to read magazines during class and this was never considered a public nuisance. Neither was Pokémon. These are arguably less harmful, but parents can also use parental controls to restrict access during school hours if they wish to do so.

It might be interesting to explore this through the lens of tobacco marketing in schools, though I’m sure this was already considered.

How many parents are using parental controls? Do they work? (I’m not a parent and am genuinely curious).

Is there a specific law that these firms are supposed to have violated? (Does there need to be? I am not a lawyer.)

Does the school district have standing to sue on behalf of the students? (Is the injury that they pay more for mental health services for students?)

I’m genuinely curious. There’s a surface analogy to the cases against opioid manufacturers and distributors, but those are controlled substances whereas YouTube is clearly not.

There isn’t even a clear causal effect of the from YouTube -> depression, IMO. Research on this has been quite low quality.

And what about the role of the parents who are the owners of the phones on which their children run TikTok?

Again genuine curiosity here, not trying to be a jerk.

The school district isn't suing "on behalf" of students. The school district claim is that it has standing to sue on it's own behalf due to specific harms it has suffered as a direct result of these companies actions (e.g. increased mental healthcare costs.)

The geek wire article mentions that they are referring to the public nuisance law.

Probably would have been more cost effective to have worked with Amazon in Seattle on the Kids launcher on the Fire OS fork of Android (the one that merges the App Store and Launcher for the kids).

It's not safe to allow school administrators to jam and deny students' (possibly distracting) communications at least on their personal devices, eh?

Perhaps students could voluntarily submit to an App Launcher for focusing on school that deprioritizes content streams that haven't been made educational while attending unpaid conpulsory education programs under threat of prosecution for truancy, not nuisance.

Non- FireOS Android forks have the "Digital Wellbeing" tools for helping oneself focus despite persistent distractions that will always exist IRL.

.. I appended above and addressed what you are asking.

This seems like the most likely section, though I am not a lawyer:

https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=7.48.120

If so, one issue this might turn on is the establishment of a causal link between something these firms are doing and a negative health impact.

That’s going to be extremely difficult to establish and is far, far from established. I’m not unsympathetic to this case but I am not that optimistic.

Happy to hear a legal perspective though.

If they spent an equivalent amount of effort on figuring out how to manage the busses out offer classes to talented kids all the residents would be better off

Similar (ish) lawsuits, (like the one against Juuls) haven't been dismissed. What makes you think this one is different?

What is the school doing about evidence that attending in-person school increases suicide? That seems like a much easier issue to tackle and well-within their remit. (Legit question as you seem well informed about their current thought process)

They will just argue that the parents should not give children phones, which is actually something I agree with.

We need coordinated parenting on when to give children these devices.

obvious enthusiasm for a legal action by multiple teams of people on salary for 4+ years, does not make it effective or have standing

> A bevy of mental health experts are core to this - so due diligence.

He said the name of ~the movie~ himself!

I'm certain that social media is contributing to worse outcomes with those at risk of mental health issues. But what can be done about it?

It's like trying to keep your kids from mixing with the wrong crowd.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com